Fedora can't find mouse.

[Richard_The_Lionhearted]

Can someone help me? I'm trying to install Fedora Core 3 and it will not detect my mouse. I tried the generic 3 button serial mouse but it won't work. The mouse is for a serial port and has no name. I think I might have done something wrong when setting up the bios. Serial port 1 is on: 2F8H/IRQ3 in the bios but all I know is that I connected the serial port onto the board port "com 1" Can someone help?

[drakebasher]

I think the "normal" setup is like this:

Windows  hex  irq  Linux
com1     3F8   4   ttyS0
com2     2F8   3   ttyS1

I'd suggest the following:
Set up your BOIS to agree with the above and then boot to Linux. Get a text console (ctrl-alt-F3) and log in with root permissions, either as root or as normal and then 'su -'.

Run the command 'gpm'. gpm is a text-mode mouse utility that I think is installed by default with Fedora. Even if you don't use a mouse in a text console, I think gpm is useful for setting up the mouse. On my FC1 and FC3, gpm is at /usr/sbin/gpm. If gpm is installed but not configured, you may get a response something like this:
O0o.oops(): [gpn.c(104)]: no deivice specified for mouse #1
That's not a bad thing.
Next, take a guess at which serial port has your mouse:

#  gpm -m /dev/ttyS0 -t help | less

This should give a display of the different mouse types that gpm recognizes. A "generic 3-button serial mouse" might be ms3 or msc. maybe bare will work, but you may only have 2 buttons working. Let's guess that you have msc:

#  gpm -m /dev/ttyS0 -t msc

I think that you will either see a cursor if you have guessed the right port, or you will not if not. So if you see no cursor when you move your mouse, try the same command but with ttyS1 instead of ttyS0. If the cursor is erratic, you have guessed wrong on the mouse type:

#  gpm -k

and try another. Once you have successfully configured your mouse, you may want to make a symbolic link to the mouse port so it is easy to find:

# ln -s /dev/ttyS1 /dev/mouse

Finally, check that the mouse is correctly configured in /etc/X11/xorg.conf under one of the sections titled "Section "InputDevice"". The line "Driver" needs to be correct (I think "mouse" should work) and one of the lines "Option" should be correct for your serial port:

• Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
  ...or...
  Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS1"
  ...or...
  Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"